University Points would like to apologize for the loooooong hiatus since our last blog post. In our absence, senior year has been considerably busier than expected. In exciting news, Juice has finished and defended her thesis (yay!).
Since our last post, we have also had the opportunity to play some tournaments and place the Ewo up on the USAU rankings, ending the season at #11! We made a splash at Centex, rising from Div II and the 22nd seed to finish 3rd, beating some strong teams (Carleton, UNC, and University of Washington to name a few) and showing that we mean business this year. We also attended Keystone Classic in Manheim, PA, finishing 3rd. Finally, we finished first at our Conference Championships at MIT this past weekend, with a strong showing (no team scoring more than 3 against us!) that should put us in a good position for Regionals.
This season has looked considerably different than last season. Last season we attended Vegas, Southerns, caught the second day of a tournament at Stonehill to make sure we got our 10 games in, Yale Cup, and then the series. We saw the same new england competition over and over again, and played northeastern about 4 times before the series. Last year, every tournament we went to had both a women’s and open division, including sectionals and regionals, which were held in the same place for both divisions. This season, every single one of our tournaments so far will have been women’s teams only. While we are not making a judgment on whether this is good or bad, we wanted to comment about our experience with attending women’s tournaments this year:
The quality of the tournaments- we had to travel a bit farther to get to Centex and Keystone (~7 hour drive for a weekend tournament) than we normally would to get to Yale Cup. However, the travel time was well worth the level of competition and quality of both tournaments. Without Limits ultimate, focused on promoting the growth and development of women’s ultimate, ran both Centex and Keystone. The tournaments featured: very thorough tournament packets, awesome swag, very efficient scoring, as well as great teams and chance to play against strong teams from different areas of the country (we had games against Ottawa, USC, Iowa State, UNC, Carleton, Washington, UCSB, Iowa, and Cornell). We can’t stress enough how well these tournaments were run, the presence of backup fields, and how effective the lines of communication between tournament organizers and team captains were. Anyone who remembers Vegas last year can understand our appreciation for this! A huge thanks to Michelle Ng for making these tournaments run smoothly (and for sacrificing sleep for ¾ of the year to make this all happen).
The focus of the tournaments- It is nice to have the women’s division be the main event at a tournament and not to come second to the open division. In general, I think women’s teams are beginning to be recognized more on usau.org and through skydmagazine.com (sometimes…). However, I am sure most women’s teams have felt they’ve taken the back burner to men’s competition before, and it’s nice to play in tournaments where people are paying attention to your results. The other benefit is the atmosphere and programming available at the tournaments- skills clinics, leadership panels, high school mentorship programs, and most importantly, the Centex dance competition. While we still hold that we should have won the dance competition, it was a lot of fun to participate in either way… watch the Ewo Smang It at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PzK9Tntd76o
The lack of open division- The one disadvantage to attending all women’s tournaments is that we did not have any tournaments at the same place/time as our men’s team. While we were able to go cheer on the Emen at their Conference Championships and a couple of them came to cheer us during ours, our Regionals will be in entirely different states. Sometimes it can be a huge help to have the men’s team pumping us up and helping us out from the sidelines. Neither team will get to watch the other division, creating less of a shared experience as a program. On the other hand, being able to focus on our game without any distractions has been beneficial this season. We hope our program can maintain its cohesion in the future, regardless of whether or not our teams attend the same tournaments.
All in all, we have had a very positive experience with the tournaments we attended this season. Thanks to Michelle and Without Limits for organizing competitive and worthwhile tournaments. Next up, New England Regionals! Stay tuned for results and follow us on twitter at http://twitter.com/#!/ewonews
“He can see a louse as far away as China but is not aware of an elephant on his nose.”